"Now You Know"

Divorce statistics are common, but the reasons for divorces are hard to pin down (CDC graph is public domain)

From the 1960’s to the 1980’s, the divorce rate in the United States doubled and has remained consistently high since then. Every year, there are about two million marriages in the U.S, and about a million divorces, leading to the much-cited statistic that half of all marriages end in divorce.

You might be shocked to learn the number one reason why people get divorced. To the question: What is the most common reason for divorce?, there is a rather surprising answer…

No one knows!

Oh, there’s plenty of speculation, to be sure. You don’t have to be much of a social scientist to guess that marital infidelity — aka cheating — is right up there as a top reason, along with financial problems in a relationship.

But there’s very little in the way of formal research or big-time surveys to back up our common-sense notions of why marriages break up.

Where does sex fit into all this? Oddly, sexual compatibility, or lack thereof, isn’t often mentioned in the limited information on why divorces happen. But a national survey from Pew Research Center identified a “happy sexual relationship” as the second most popular answer to the question “What makes a marriage work?”. The number one reason was Faithfulness.

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Okay, David:
Of course, the individuals’ reasons for a divorce are as varied as decades ago, although back when, adultery was the best and easiest argument in court, some gentlemen admitting to adultery to avoid proving the wife was at fault, or to get a quick divorce, since other grounds were harder to justify in court. No-default divorce laws (ca. 1970, also in other countries) made it easier to get a divorce, and also limited the information about the true reasons.
Why were the divorce laws liberalized? Because society’s attitude towards divorce had changed, also the traditional expectation that marriage is for life.
I – and others – see the “pill” behind this. The doubling of the divorce rate between 1960 and 1980 is just the period during which the pill became available: first only to married women, then to single adults, and now to virtually any girl with the guts to ask for it.
The pill increased promiscuity. People didn’t have to marry to have sex; the social barriers and stigmatism for having sex before marriage and with different partners dropped (with a clunk). People discovered that it was better with some than with others, making them more critical once they married; and having played around before, adultery came easier, also because they had the experience that casual sex without too much emotional involvement was a possibility (and safe) – and there were partners who felt the same. Adultery probably became more common, but under “no-fault” not necessarily in court statistics. Masters and Johnson and “Joy of Sex” certainly opened peoples eyes to seeing sex as something other than for procreation within a marriage.
Not unrelated to the general availability of the pill, women’s lib arose: more career women, less dependence on a spouse’s support and easier no-fault divorce, if either partner wanted out. Couples didn’t have to just put up with each other, as they generally were more likely to do before the pill became available. Staying together because of the children became a weaker argument, especially with the increase in the numbers of divorces and the acceptance of patchwork families. This article seems to agree:http://www.janetsmith.excerptsofinri.com/
I found that with search terms: divorce pill. The search turned up many other websites, quite a few of those about this study, that claims that the pill upsets women’s choice of the right partner:http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2008/08/13/health/webmd/main4347457.shtml
To be fair, this article takes a different view:http://www.nber.org/digest/nov07/w12944.html